CITU CONDEMNS GOVT MOVE TO PRIVATISE AIR INDIA AND AIRPORTS PIECE BY PIECE

The Centre of Indian Trade Unions condemns the desperate bid of the Govt of India to privatise Air India piece by piece in favour of the private corporate, foreign and domestic.

As reported in the press, the Govt has decided to go for strategic sale of 100% stake in Air India’s ground handling subsidiary, Air India Air Transport Services Ltd (AIATSL). The Govt has been pushing through privatization of this profit making subsidiary unit of Air India, which has earned a profit of Rs 334 million in 2016-17 with a revenue generation of Rs 6.2 billion. The Govt has embarked on privatizing its profit making subsidiary AIATSL after its hell-bent effort to privatise Air India as a whole failed to get any response. Similar move of privatization in respect of its other profit-making subsidiaries cannot be ruled out in the days to come, since the Govt of the day is desperate in outright sale of strategic public assets and infrastructures by any means and at any cost, totally unconcerned of its disastrous impact on national interests.

And same desperate move of the BJP Govt at the centre to transfer public assets and infrastructure to private hands on a platter is also revealed by the Govt’s move to privatise six major Airports of the country at Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvanantapuram and Mangaluru. All these airports were modernized with huge expenditure of hundreds of crores of rupees from national exchequer through Airport Authority of India. And now these modernized airports, all in the state capitals, are being sold out to private corporates empowering them with unfettered rights and authority also to utilize the huge land assets under these airports for commercial purposes including building hotels, shopping mall etc. It is nothing but a design of loot on the crucial infrastructure but also the exploitation of huge land assets at their disposal for private profit.

CITU denounces such desperate move of the BJP Govt to sell out public assets and infrastructure on a platter to private entities particularly when it is having couple of months left for its present tenure. CITU asserts that such desperate bid of all out privatization of everything by the BJP Govt in a hurry must be resisted and CITU calls upon the working class to unite and fight such anti-national move of sell out and privatization. CITU is confident the working class will give a befitting reply to such retrograde move of the Govt through massive countrywide general strike on 8-9 January 2019.

Centre of Indian Trade Unions

The CITU believes that the exploitation of the working class can be ended only by socializing all means of production: distribution and exchange and establishing a Socialist State. Holding fast the ideal of socialism, the CITU stands for the complete emancipation of the society from all exploitation.